mgo.licio.us

"The face of the operation is Briatore (referred to exclusively in the film by his colleagues and angry, chanting detractors as "Flavio"), an anthropomorphic radish who spends most of his time at QPR plotting to fire all of the managers."

At press time, Harbaugh had sent Michigan’s athletic department an envelope containing a heavily annotated seating chart, a list of the 63,000 seat views he had found unsatisfactory, and a glowing 70-page report on section 25, row 12, seat 9, which he claimed is “exactly what the great sport of football is all about.”

No it's not. It's thriving, making great gains in major markets (including the three biggest) and carving out strong niches even in places like Nashville that have struggled in the past. It has a good television situation on a rising network that is dedicated to its success, it has recognizable and marketable stars, and it garners positive media attention when it actually plays games.

While I do find it amusing that "Dogs in the city" had double the viewership...I don't see how the ratings for games 1 & 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals between two of the smallest NHL markets in the country proves that the league is "dying".

The matchup does have an impact on virtually every championship event with the exception of the Super Bowl.

I'm not saying the NHL is "thriving" per se...but they have increased revenue for seven straight years since the 04-05 lockout.

link showing a substantial increase in youth players since 2005-06? USA Hockey membership numbers could very well be the best predictor of future popularity of the sport, and 15.6% over the past six years is pretty damn good. These latest numbers also include one year growth numbers of 12.7% in Arizona, 11.8% in California, and many examples of double digit growth in the Mite division nationwide. In all, 37 states experienced growth in registered USA Hockey playing members in 2011-12.

Youth hockey is also one of the most expensive sports to play due to equipment, rink time, and transportation. It will always be somewhat of a niche sport, especially outside of it's historic footprint, because of it.

Exponential growth in a small market still means a low relative increase in absolute viewership.

to try and say that the NHL will have higher viewership than the NFL sometime soon, or to say that 100% of youth will play hockey in x years. My only point was that growth itself means hockey is not a dying sport.

I don't disagree with what you say as far as the limit on youth hockey in America (it was definitely a struggle for my family in Illinois), but if anything that might make the growth numbers more impressive.

Honest question. Who are the marketable stars? I don't follow hockey but will watch the occasional game in the playoffs and the finals, but I don't think I could name more than 5 players. I live in a NhL market (NYC) but it's one where the Rangers seem to be far behind the other 3 major sports for media attn. They'r fans are passionate but the players dont seem to have nearly the cultural profile of players for even the Nets. Is this a case of hockey culture or fandom being a closed circle?

Nah. The Rangers have a good team but they aren't star-studded. Guys like Ovechkin (see elsewhere in the thread about how huge the Caps are in DC) and Crosby are fun to watch and legitimately good. In contrast, 10 years ago they NHL tried to push guys that barely scored 80

Kane and Toews seem about as popular in Chicago as anyone. There might be other athletes on their level of popularity (Urlacher if he was a few years younger, maybe Hester or Noah), but they're definitely up in that top tier. Also, by top tier I mean everyone not named Derrick Rose.

The NHL is dangerously at risk of regressing back to that territory again. Scoring regressed to dead puck era levels last year and the 2012 Stanley Cup Finals were a repeat of the disastrously unappealing Finals that defined a lot of that era. That probably played at least some part in why the Finals got such shitty ratings.

Anecdotal, but here in DC, a town whose natives fancy themselves "Southerners," the people are hockey mad. And it doesn't just extend to northern transplants like myself. Average ticket prices are well above $50 and have been increasing by double digit percentages for a few years. I would guess their other revenue streams are growing just as quickly.

The lockout is costing most parties serious money, but saving me a little.

I wish I was Canadian (from west michigan) and I care. Bettman is completely complicit with chronic lost of interest in the league. At least I have college hockey and juniors (on CBC) going right now to keep me somewhat sane.

At this point, why even bother? 41 games on the schedule now according ot the official Red Wings calendar. Even if they salvage the rest of the season right now the playoffs will be nearly as long as the regular season... it would be such a fraud.

IMO we are going to soon learn that every team in the NHL was secretly purchased by one insanely wealthy man over the past 40 years whose only son died in a tragic zamboni accident somewhere in Manitoba. On that fateful day he swore on the life of his beloved son to wipe professional hockey from the face of the earth and began his diabolical plot to kill the sport by buying all franchises, one by one, using a series of robots to do his bidding. When enough of the hockey-hating robots were put in place he was able to summon the dead and bring the corpse of the Dear Leader, Kim Jong II back to life as Gary Bettman - zombie commissioner.

The last steps in his evil plan to kill hockey have the robot owners and the zombie commissioner propose a "deal" with the players union so one-sided and ridiculous there was no way they could accept it thereby assuring the rich man that professional hockey would never again be played in North America. I think we are at that point now.

I have no other logical explanation for what's happening other than that. Nothing else makes sense.

I was just hoping that hockey would come back to take away at least some of the time that the farcical NBA takes up on the ESPN. If I wanted to see basketball played with 60% effort, I'd walk down to the over-40 league at the YMCA!

It's not as if the NHL is broadcast on ESPN anyway. I don't care for the NHL, but I don't take shots at it either. But since the sheep around here refuse to see through your act, of course they'll eat up your anti-NBA comments.

An NBA fan asserting that another league acts like zoo animals? When was the last time an entire team climbed into the stands like a flock of enraged wildabeests to fight the fans? Or pulled a gun on a team member over a gambling debt? Or numerous other incidents which have only highlighted the childish and comical behavior of a large segment of the NBA population.

Moreover, I have watched NBA events on television and they are anything except sporting events. Much more comparable to the Professional Wrestling circuit of the mid-1990s. I don't need some pseudo-rapster yelling at the fans to "Get Louder" in the middle of the 2nd quarter in the middle of the season where each team casually jogs up and down the court, occasionally allowing the "star" player to toss up a ridiculous three-point (which in my opinion, has dimished much of the game) or try some sort of "from the streets" trick play.

Additionally, I do not require a bunch of faux-strippers to toss their hair about during the one minute commercial breaks which occur every two minutes; although the occasional frisbee chasing dog is welcome respite from the comical displays of teamwork on display for the majority of the game. But, my oh my, those players do hustle... for the final five or six minutes of every game, which just so happen to be close enough to warrant fans' attention, even though the majority of the game was decidely lopsided for the majority of the game.

Although, judging by your picture, I suppose you are the type who buys Dave Brandon's hideous monstrosities.

"Although, judging by your picture, I suppose you are the type who buys Dave Brandon's hideous monstrosities."

Please, clarifiy this last bit. Because the insinuation you are making is that a sig of a poster with a parody of the president as a rapper, means that Brandon/youth/AA/hip-hop culture is driving the multiple alternate uniform trend in college football.

Not inflammatory at all, but then again, it always degenerates to this when people bring up NBA v. NHL crap.

The NBA is about as close to the fixed circus that is the WWE as any league in the country. America would be for the better if David Stern's replacement reverses about every decision he put in place for the past decade.

The longer this goes on, the more people will find something to care about besides hockey. They just had a lockout in 2004-2005, and people haven't forgotten. It's hard to retain viewers - and impossible to attract new ones - if you're not playing. Not good for the Brand(TM).

Denard has spent the offseason working really hard and smiling at people.

Hockey is a really great sport. Too bad their trying to kill it. Personally, I'd much rather sacrifice the NBA...or even the NFL.

(edit) On second thought, if the NHL really did manage to kill itself off then I would have to think that there would be enough interests left over to salvage some of the pieces and create a new league. It'd likely be much smaller and located in the Midwest, Northeast and Canada and that might actually be an improvement (in the big picture sense of things).

That said a 48 game schedule is about right for the NBA and NHL. The NFL should be 12 games (especially if they really cared about concussions).

The NHL playoffs are the best of the four sports and the Stanley Cup presentation is also the best in sports. I would great miss the NHL if they threw away the whole season. Holding out with faint optimism...

'Coach, the way I look at it I've been so blessed through life. I've only had two really bad days in my life.”' — John Beilein

hard to think about sports management incompetence without his mug coming to mind. If they lose this season -- which seems likely -- he will have presided over the loss of one-third of the league's schedule over the past eight years. Very hard for me to understand how the ownership, which includes lots of "good" owners, can tolerate this knucklehead.

And yes, I get that there has been unreasonableness on both sides. But at the end of the day, I think Bettman did a horrible job of setting expectations and worse job executing the contract negotiations.